Donald M. Hess

Donald M. Hess (3 August 1936 – 30 January 2023) was a Swiss winemaker and art collector.

Life and career
Donald Marc Hess inherited a brewery close to Bern from his father. His father died when he was 20 years old. After learning the brewing tradition in Bavaria as an apprentice, he managed to run the family brewery. As a specialty, he used a new method for brewing a non-alcoholic beer, which became successful in the entire Switzerland. After a few years, he sold his brewery to a larger group and used the proceeds to buy a mineral spring in Vals, a village in the Grisons to produce bottled mineral water. Over the next years, this mineral water, labeled Valser, became the leading brand in Switzerland. He sold this business to the local Coca Cola Company in 2002.

Hess also inherited a hotel in Morocco. To expand this business, he began managing hotels for other owners. At its peak, he had a workforce of 12,000 employees in that country. When he sold these operations, he wanted to reinvest the funds in a US mineral water company. For this purpose, he traveled to the US looking for such opportunities. In the Napa Valley he tasted local wines and was impressed by their quality. He decided to look for vineyards instead of mineral water sources. Against the trend in the Napa Valley, he bought his first vineyards higher up at the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains in the Mount Veeder AVA area in 1978. In addition, he leased the old Christian Brothers winery building nearby where he created a museum for contemporary art. Later, additional vineyards were bought by Hess in Northern California. The unique combination of wineries and art collection is called the Hess Collection. In the corresponding museum, a world-class private collection of contemporary art is open to the public. Among the artists, from whom Hess bought works, are Magdalena Abakanowicz, Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Balthasar Burkhard, John Connell, James G. Davis, Franz Gertsch, Deryck Healey, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Anselm Kiefer, Alois Lichtsteiner, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Nakis Panayotidis, Markus Raetz, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Gustav Troger, Ouattara Watts, and Markus Zürcher.

While travelling, Hess discovered an interesting but rundown winery high up in the mountains of Argentina called Bodega Colomé. It had already a tradition of over 150 years. Its vineyards are at 2200 to 3100 meters above sea level. Together with his wife Ursula, they decided to buy the property in 2001 and develop not only the winery but also the small mountain village. They made it their home. The wines at Bodega Colomé are certified biodynamic. One of the wines produced is called Altura Maxima, as this wine is made from grapes at the highest elevation worldwide. Similar to his winery in the Napa Valley, Hess built a museum close to this winery in 2009. However, this museum is exclusively dedicated to the installations of James Turrell.

Hess bought additional wineries in Australia (2003: Peter Lehmann) and two wineries in South Africa so that eight wineries on four continents belonged to the international Hess Group. In 2016, the Hess Group, organized as Hess Family Estates under the leadership of two stepsons of Donald Hess, sold their wineries in Australia and South Africa and concentrated on their operations in California and Argentina.

Personal life and death
Hess was married and had a daughter and two stepdaughters. He died on 30 January 2023, at the age of 86.